


blood spot

by tin_girl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hogwarts Sixth Year, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Overuse of Metaphor, Pre-Epilogue, Sectumsempra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:28:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21794572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/pseuds/tin_girl
Summary: Harry, Draco, and the spell that went wrong
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 12
Kudos: 106





	blood spot

**Author's Note:**

> the true title is actually 'the over-dramatic morally-ambigious-harry fanfic i wrote at an airport'. also, harry's thought process and everything in this is probably really unhealthy, but, you know, war
> 
> Anyway, enjoy! 
> 
> Also, the grahic violence warning, it's nothing /extremely/ graphic, just your basic sectumsempra stuff I'd say, but better be safe than sorry

Each thick skin yields to a counter-twist, splits like rotted leather.

~Daniel Hall, ‘Mangosteens’

Here is something Harry never tells anyone about, not even himself, not even after dark:

Once, in sixth year, he follows Malfoy to the lake, no invisibility cloak but invisible anyway, gleefully smiling at how somewhere along the way he taught himself to be a shadow, and he sees Malfoy point his wand at a frog. It’s almost sunrise, and the day is one of those that come slow like a bruise, all spreading blue and no gash in the sky for sun to bleed through.

 _He likes fried eggs_ , Harry thinks stupidly, because by now he has all of Malfoy’s habits memorized, knows him better than the inside pocket of his cloak into which he whispers thoughts he doesn’t want sometimes. _He likes fried eggs, and he always pokes the yolk with his fork, frowning, frowning, until it spills, and then a small, barely-there smile._

“ _Crucio_ ,” Draco tries, and it sounds like a question, and it doesn’t do a thing. Harry watches and almost laughs. Oh, he thinks, is this how we grow up?

 _Crucio, crucio, crucio_ , and it never works, Draco’s voice shaking like when you’re cold and holding a spoon against the edge of a teacup. Crucio, but no intent behind it, and no wonder, with the frog so small, but who would have thought? Some Death Eater he is, Malfoy.

“ _Crucio_ ,” Harry whispers alongside him the next time, his wand drawn and pointed too, and he watches something wreck through the frog, and watches Draco drop his wand, and stops.

Oh, he thinks again, and almost doubles over, is this how we grow up?

He feels sick over how he doesn’t feel as sick as he should.

This – the first time he leaves Draco behind, a boy who won’t eat his eggs if the edges are too crisp, a boy who wants the world to burn without having to light a match.

“Coward,” Harry whispers the very same day while passing Draco in the corridor, and let him wonder why, and let Harry have this: the sweet lie to himself that all this changes nothing.

*

He has kissed Cho, and he has kissed Ginny, but no matter what anyone says, Harry falls in love only once.

It’s something an old witch he didn’t know told him in a bar one weekend, her lipstick purple and her smile like something that would fit the whole world were she hungry enough to try and eat it. The last time you fall in love should be the first, she said, and the heart line on her palm was splendid like a knife crime. If it’s not, you’ve never been in love at all, she said, and Harry knew that it was just a story, and that the world was full of people who loved and then stopped loving and then loved again, but he believed her anyway, with the sort of conviction that only people who believe in God have. This, the one thing he knows, and he thinks of death sometimes, how he’ll step out on the other side of it and smile with satisfaction at how he had been right all along.

Tough luck though, because when he falls in love, it’s as bad as it goes – a spell gone wrong, and Draco’s skin peeling off in stripes, everything red like the inside of a mouth bitten through and filling with blood.

Back when he said _crucio_ with intent for the first time, the small, animal body twisting like nothing alive ever should and like nothing dead ever did, it felt like something inside him snapped, a tiny capillary somewhere breaking under the pressure of what he’d done – the smallest cry of outrage his body allowed itself at the way he was ruining himself with two syllables and a flick of his wrist. _Sectumsempra_ is different, so cruel on the tongue that Harry regrets speaking it even before it well leaves his mouth, and then Draco broken open with it, lips parting in surprise, and—

And Harry knows it’s love by how he can’t stand to look but looks anyway, and by how instead of straining like before a break, everything inside him goes soft.

 _Not like this_ , he thinks, a puddle of blood already spreading on the bathroom tiles. _Anything else_ , and his heart is an uncurling fist, like a hand going slack. 

_Pray for me, someone_ , he begs, in case no one will pray for Draco, because just then it’s the same thing anyway, and he tries pressing the wounds closed, Draco’s blood so warm, summer warm.

Only later, once it dries on his skin, does it grow cold.

*

The war is almost upon them when Harry whispers all his love into the inside pocket of his cloak, and burns the cloak after, his heart all violence again.

*

“You must think that I—” Draco starts, and Harry’s not thinking anything but this:

Draco’s blood, summer warm, and if it’s ever to be spilled again, Harry won’t let even one drop of it go to waste. Around them, Hogwarts’ crumbs are scattered like an afterthought, and the war still has everybody’s lips spelled cold, the wind howling like it has someone to grieve too and words chilled to death on people’s tongues.

In the quiet, Draco speaks, stutters, speaks with his hands, like shot birds still trying.

“The truth is—”

Harry never learns what the truth is, because Draco’s mouth gives up, and his hands do, too, fingers curling loosely inwards as if he’s hiding them in shame. His forearm, Harry notices, always turned towards his body, too, even when covered with a long sleeve.

“Did you know, back then, you never did anything to that frog,” Harry whispers after Draco’s long gone, nothing but the shape of a comma several yards away, trying to piece the castle back together as everyone around carefully doesn’t whisper his name.

Harry’s burnt his cloak, but the love echoes back to him from the ashes, says, here I am, tastes like a curse and yet Harry tips his head back and swallows anyway.

*

“Don’t they eat frogs in France?” he says instead one afternoon, a few feet of space between him and Draco where Voldemort could easily stand, were he still alive.

Where he seems to stand, even dead.

“Don’t you ever shut up?” Draco mumbles, and Harry wonders if he ever dreams of his wounds opening and closing like a mouth singing. Harry does, and in those dreams he shuts Draco’s wounds up the only way he knows how, the only way he wants to – by kissing them quiet.

*

In the end, he decides when he sits across from Draco at breakfast, dawn breaking like knuckles split on somebody’s jawbone, and the Great Hall all empty, all echoes. There’s a blood spot on the yolk of Draco’s egg, and Harry expects him to frown in distaste and push the plate away, all aristocrat, all spoiled rich boy, all Malfoy.

When Draco pokes the egg with his fork until it spills and eats it, blood spot and all – that’s when Harry knows he wants this, for better or for worse.

*

When he courts Draco, he doesn’t do it the Gryffindor way, no great declarations, no spread arms – take me or leave me – as he yells love across the Great Hall, across the clatter of cutlery hitting plates. He doesn’t do it the Hufflepuff way, no hands on Draco’s shoulders, no knit jumpers, no warm smiles. Nothing Ravenclaw about it, either, no talking about gods under the stars, no snippets of poetry pressed against the inside of his cheek.

When he courts Draco, he does it like a Slytherin, sewing himself into Draco’s life so subtly that Draco doesn’t even realize until Harry’s all the way in, handing him his favorite tea before Draco can reach for it, whispering to him about blood across rooms and calling him a coward until Draco lets his ribs strain over the readiness to prove him wrong.

Harry sees a dead rabbit on the grounds outside, once, its neck bitten through and blood trickling out. _Love_ , he thinks, pressing his finger against the fur where the skin is split like he would with an eyelid to close a killed one’s eyes. _Love_ , he thinks, _a noun first and a verb second. A thing to get so you can act it._

“Checkmate,” he says when he wins against Ron for the first time, and across the room Draco looks like something Harry’s never touched.

*

“You’re not responsible for me because of some fucked-up spell,” Draco whispers into Harry’s neck, half-drunk, breath warm and every vowel like something Harry’s pulse is trying to synch with. Lazy vowels, as if Draco has all the time in the world, and Harry wishes they had all the time in the world—

And then Harry only has to lean to the side, just one inch, like giving up, like resting, like the slow relaxing of muscles, Draco’s lips suddenly on his pulse, the dryness of it, the surprise of it, like bumping into something, like an accident, only deliberate after all.

“Are you okay?” Draco says, Harry’s pulse too fast and he must know it, must feel it drum against his kiss, so eager it’s obscene, so eager when everyone’s still wearing black.

“I’m in love,” Harry says. I’m in love, I’m in love, I’m in love, and Draco’s eyes widen like war hasn’t happened yet, like there still are things he hasn’t seen, mouth an o like back then, only no flesh splitting.

“I’m in love,” Harry repeats, and his heart goes slack, slack, slack again.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway, I find that I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of Harry realizing he loves Draco/falling in love with Draco after fucking him up with Sectumsempra and I don't want to think of what it says about me as a person.................. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments are much appreciated and bring me so, so much joy <3
> 
> Also, here's a link to my original story if anyone's interested: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23463895/chapters/56249917   
> (It's about stupid boys in a boarding school and art theft)


End file.
